The reason posts about social media are flooding the blog-o-sphere is that it really is a really useful medium of advertising and marketing.

Businesses now have the ability to target prospects based on their demographics and even their interests! While this sounds exciting, many people haven’t had much success with this type of marketing. This is because something, somewhere, went wrong.

This post will hopefully save you the frustration and losses, and will provide you with a “shortcut to social media marketing success”.

But before that, let’s have a look at a few benefits of social marketing (in the hope of getting you to hop on the wagon, in case you are still on the fence).

Increased social signals that result in better SEO rankings

Increased brand recognition

Lead generation

Increased loyalty

Getting new customers

Increase traffic

Lower marketing costs

Convinced? Cool! Let’s get into the actual strategies!

Strategy #1: Piggybacking

Before you start piggybacking on others, make sure that you leverage the use of your own assets and resources first.

Do you have an email list? Then email all your subscribers and tell them to “Like” your new Facebook page. Maybe you can throw in a small bribe to encourage them (a free download of one of your low-cost products for a limited time?).

Do you have a blog? Have a link above and below every post asking your readers to “Follow” you on Twitter for updates.

Once you have that covered, you can move to forming partnerships with other people, or, finding people who will promote your products and brand to their followers or fans. How? By giving them something of value in exchange. It could be an offer that only their followers can take advantage of (a major discount or a give away of your products).

Strategy #2: Advertising

Contrary to popular belief, social media marketing is not meant to be an “Advertising Terminator”

In fact, advertising can be done within social media, and if you have some funds to invest, it is a great way to get more “Likes” and “Followers”. It only costs a few pennies for a targeted click (social ads are still relatively new), so get on that wagon before this aspect of social changes!

However, ads on social media are not famous for being the best converting ones. So, it might be a good idea to (again) bribe the ad viewers to get them on your page. Provide them with an incentive (free stuff), and increase your CTR.

Advertising doesn’t need to be limited to the online world. You may very well expand your reach by having “Like Us at Facebook.com/YourBusiness” ads in offline prints or at local places (restaurant, bars, etc.).

In 2013, sending strong social signals comes with so many benefits, that it is almost stupid to ignore social media as part of your marketing strategy. Not many things will bring you

Improved rankings in the search engine results page

New customers

More loyalty in existing customers

People who will start talking about your business in real life

…all at once!

However, if you are here because of the title of this post, you are probably already aware of all of that, and you probably just want to know “How do I get more of these social signals?”

Before we get to that, we need to go deeper in the issue. What issue? The issue that we are just seeing these as “numbers”. How many likes, tweets or shares…

These social signals… We need to remember that they are from people. It’s a real person who “Likes” a page, a lot like it’s a real person who is reading this post. If I were writing for numbers (instead of for people), this article would be of the same level of quality as the junk that comes out of those “Article Generators”. This article is good (hopefully we share the same opinion!), because I have you (the audience) in mind.

With that out of the way, let’s see what you, as a business can do for more social results.

Know Your Audience

With all the talk I made about having your audience in mind above, I had to make this my first point.

If you don’t know your audience, you won’t be able to get their interest. No Interest = No Like, No Share, No Tweet, No Follower.

Let’s use the “muscle building” niche as an example. A lot of the guys interested in muscle building also like MMA, boxing, self-defense, football and hockey. Knowing this increases your chances of making valuable posts and posting cool pictures on your Facebook page (and hence creating more engagement on it).

Take the time to find, curate and create good content. Do your brand or business a favor, and do not use software for this. If you cannot do it yourself, assign the task to another human being, preferably one who is familiar with the niche you are in.

Posting on a Friday at 17:00 and on Sunday at 03:00 on Facebook will produce a different amount of response.

If you are doing social media marketing anyway, you might as well be getting the most out of it, right?

This post is about the best times you can post on Facebook, as well as how you can make sure that a maximum number of people get involved on your post (by either commenting, sharing, or simply liking).

You Got To Love The Weekend!

Posting content on weekends produces the highest mean number of responses (maximum interaction). If you are after comments, shares, and likes, get started from Friday afternoon!

Interactions start dropping after late Sunday night.

Do Something Else on Wednesdays

Use that particular day of the week to do anything but social media marketing. Posting content on a Wednesday generates the minimum amount of interaction (it’s actually below the average for the entire week).

So write content, create more offers, mow the lawn, do anything you want, but do not post anything on Facebook on Wednesdays!

You will notice that big brands actually do it the other way round; they post on Wednesdays while being idle on the weekends. Why? I’m not sure. But it’s probably due to the fact that the social media marketing guys these companies hire don’t work on Saturdays. It’s sad for them, because they are definitely missing out on the sheer number of people who actually use their Facebook on that day. The weekend can turn out to be the best time to be posting on Facebook!

Variations

Of course, these are just guidelines. They are not set in stone. Actually, different niches have shown to have their own optimum days and the best times to post will vary according to the industry/niche being targeted.

Gardening might convert more on Mondays while Clothing does so on Thursdays.

The only way to know really what works for your niche is to market it everyday for the first couple of weeks, and see what days get the highest response.

People use Facebook at Work

It might seem sensible to post your content at night, when everyone supposedly checks his or her Facebook. But this is not how things work. People mostly spend their time on the social network when they are at work, so you have a better chance of having your post in front of their eyeballs between 09:00 – 19:00.

Max 2 Posts

Don’t be one of those people who just post random stuff a whole day long. You must have noticed that these people do not get a lot of attention and interaction on their profile. This is due to 2 reasons:

Facebook actually penalizes excessive posting (and they do not appear in people’s newsfeed).

It’s just plain annoying.

One post per day is awesome. 2 posts is cool. 3 posts starts getting too much in my books.